Making the Grades

In this corrosive environment, Congress likes to get tough on agencies, demanding better performance while at the same time cutting budgets and staffing. A dozen or more major laws have been enacted in the past decade requiring better management in fields ranging from finance to information technology to capital planning.

The Federal Performance Project that is the subject of this special issue provides an outside evaluation of how agencies are meeting the demands for better management and improved services. Begun more than five years ago with a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the project has evaluated a total of 27 agencies. Seven are covered in detail this year. This issue assigns them letter grades, ranging from A to D, in five categories of management. In line with Congress' increasing focus, the FPP grading criteria have been revised this year to place greater weight on managing for results.

It's worth noting that the agencies examined by the project team are much bigger than almost all private sector organizations. Their lines of business are complex, sometimes conflicting, infused with social values and subject to shifting political winds. They are true bureaucracies that cannot benefit from the private-sector discipline of the bottom line. Some are afflicted with intractable problems of such long standing as to defy any attempts at the quick fix. Many are trying to improve, and the Federal Performance Project assigns some weight to momentum. But our evaluations are largely focused on the current condition of agencies' management capabilities. So it is that the beleaguered Bureau of Indian Affairs, characterized by all of the problems cited above, earns an overall grade of D this year, the lowest grade so far assigned by the FPP.

Counterintuitively, given its budget problems, the Postal Service earns an A for effective management of a difficult assignment.

The grades-a quick means of capturing people's attention-reflect a huge amount of work by our partners at George Washington University, ably led by Philip Joyce, and a massive reporting effort by our editorial staff under the direction of Anne Laurent. Both Anne and Phil have worked on the project since its inception, and are largely responsible for its high quality. We are indebted as well this year to the Council for Excellence in Government, which assembled a group of highly experienced former government executives to review our grades. And, as always, we are grateful to many people in the agencies who have helped us with our research including, this year, hundreds of managers who completed a newly designed survey.

In the end, the point of the exercise is to serve you, our readers, by shining a light on practices you might adopt or avoid as you go about the difficult job of managing the most complex enterprises in the world.